Pork products supplier Smithfield Foods has invested $25m in US-based online meal ingredients provider Chef’d as part of a $35.2m funding round, CNBC reported on Wednesday.
The round was filled out by the $10m that packed food producer Campbell Soup Company provided for the company in May this year together with a $200,000 investment by grocery e-commerce company Fresh Direct.
Founded in 2013, Chef’d operates an online platform that lists a large range of recipes and meal plans as well as the mechanism for users to order the ingredients for home delivery. It had previously raised $12.3m in funding in May 2016, according to a securities filing.
Explaining the company’s focus on strategic investors, Chef’d CEO Kyle Ransford told CNBC: “E-commerce and direct-to-consumer is an evolving space. The strategics are ahead of the financial players in terms of understanding where the market is and what it is doing.”
The company is competing against rivals such as publicly-listed Blue Apron, which has seen its shares plummet in recent weeks, but Ransford said Chef’d is different because it is not a subscription service and is aiming to grow through partnerships with large brands such as the New York Times.
– Photo courtesy of Chef’d